Why is gambling so boring?

I said to the dealer girl on betfair live casino baccarat: 'Why is this SO boring? The final insult of this whole epic, catchpenny, leaching, parasitical, conning swiz is that it's BORING. I mean where's the good bit? At least with other vices there's a good bit - prostitute: there's a good bit; alcohol: there's a good bit. Racing: watching a few nags go round a dirt track in the Midlands and most of the time that's your horse going backwards in the last three furlongs.

Backgammon is the game you're looking for colonel.

Tell me more.

Backgammon with the doubling cube is as good as it gets in the gambling world.

Used to be able to play online but I think you'll join a club now.

What part of the country do you live in colonel.

i suspect the problem lies within. unfulfilled, tired of a humdrum existence with little or no banging and few friends, or bored of those you have?

go and get plastered on good quality vino, hire a brass if you are ugly and a bit of gear if necessary, shove it up her council and give it large portions.

some people need viagra but not me. i use it as a sedative as im alight 24/7 every day

backgammon is scary because of the cube. i used to play a variation that did not permit stacking. much more fun and incredibly volatile

poker with a few chums and a boatload is fun. a day at the races and whatever transpires afterwards can be rewarding. you can pick up some crumpet, even me, and i look like a syphilitic baboon

I've never felt deprived of good wine or sexual opportunity. You seem to be saying that having a busy sex life or being drunk will alter my perception of truth about gambling. We need a philosopher at this point.

volatile is the word I was looking for mitolo

“If I lose today, I can look forward to winning tomorrow, and if win today, I can expect to lose tomorrow. A sure thing is no fun.”

And losers ain't much better. . .

“Hoping to recoup is what ruins the gambler.”

Where are these chummy little aphorisms coming from, Move? Chairman Mao's little red book? Ecclesiastes? The Koran? We must be told.

JML, London.

Baltasar Gracián y Morales, a 17th century philosopher who also said “Quit while you’re ahead. All the best gamblers do.”

but its not truth. its how you perceive it. you could always stop. why did you do it in the first place? it must have given pleasure at some point. or maybe you are in a rut and are trying to punt your way out. or maybe youve so much moolah you cant get a frill-although thats unlikely as you wouldnt  be here. you need to develop and interior life or you will forever be disgruntled. read a few books. and not self-help psychobabble.

if you are getting you leg over, drinking good vino and a winning wagon you are in a tiny minority. bugger off. go on a sailing holiday or cycle down one of europes major rivers. both of these are tremendous fun and inexpensive- ie less than a hotel for 2 weeks in ibiza. a boat costs nothing if you can give it large when pulling into a greek harbour. cycling the rhine or danube you can go wherever you like whenever you like and is incredibly civilised; the lower orders arent great cyclists.  and great sherbet at every meander.

learn something. join a book club (9o% female and bored and posh and open to persuasion).

the best gamblers would be fools to give up if they are ahead of the game and consistently win. unless theyve won enough to make it irrelevant

baccarat - at least casino baccarat - is about as much fun as slots - you have no control over play and just watch the cards played on your behalf.

chemin de fer I suppose is a little more fun, though if playing with Royalty be sure to keep your hands away from your counters...

'but its not truth. its how you perceive it'

I think it was Hamlet who said 'nothing's good or bad but thinking makes it so'. A groovy idea but just wait till you are in a hellish spot and then try not thinking your way round it.

I'm pretty well read, Mitolo. Have you read all 12 volumes of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time? 1,000,000 words? Have you read Little Dorrit? (Nice debtors' prison angle there) Have you read Shakespeare, Proust? Have you read all of Kipling, Byron and Keats? I almost have. You're building a picture of some embattled, skint, thick loser - your own vanity and the endemic snobbery of all humans egging you on. Suffice to say I play the nags here and there but it has no impact on my financial wellbeing whatsoever, in fact it must rank as one of the cheapest pastimes I have. My Befair p&l for the past six months: punted 16 grand; won 15.5. But why shouldn't we want to win? I have NEVER understood the whole horseplayers' idea of losing gracefully or not entertaining the idea of winning a vast acca. I mean, why shouldn't people: what's left if you don't? Shovelling the same 500 quid back and forth every few weeks.

wasnt that what ivey got got cheating at?

ive done and won plenty in casinos but largely dont bovver any more as its not really much fun and whos going to be a card counter after 987 bottles of vino? only roulette whenever im there if only to do everyones head in with barmy theories about wheel-bias and lucky numbers. a scary number of people believe it

but casinos can be handy for a late night sherbet if everywhere else is closed. dont venture upstairs to the roof terrace in the hipperdrome in l square as i could be there at 5 am

ive read almost none of it except for dickens.  dont read much fiction aside from waugh and wodehouse although me fave is darkness at noon, which should be compulsory. i read historical biography as a hobby and am spectacularly boring on things like the collectivisation of agriculture in the ussr. have you read robert conquest or orwell- ive done all of bob and most of george but so what? it was only a suggestion, not a snooty criticism.

is snobbery endemic to humanity? i dont fink so and i aint vain.

i wasnt building a picture-i was having a guess after you went to the bother of airing your frustration with gambolling on a quiet tuesday on an anonymous forum. you say you are in london. theres no shaortage of things to do, if you have the readies.

In the days when I worked for a notorious tabloid I sometimes found myself in casinos. Desperate places. I was reading about Lucky Lucan recently. He really should have been called Unlucky Lucan.

All of George Orwell, even almost all of his essays and journalism. I read Conquest's The Dragons of Expectation a few years ago and found it to be rather good. I have only dabbled in the Great Terror. I loathe communism and its little brother socialism. Poor Orwell couldn't wean himself off the latter despite his brilliance of mind. One of Powell's excellent novels is dedicated to Conquest. I admire Waugh tremendously. Wodehouse is a genius but one I tire of easily, which of course is a heretical view.

dats true. the word soulless could have been invented for them. and the last place you will find a gambler

although casinos abroad are a bit more fun and less rigid. one in karlovy vary is good fun

I think snobbery - various forms of it, not just social - is endemic to humanity and I say that not as a commie.

surprised if there are many conquest devotees on hear. he was howled down by progressive forces when he nailed their lies and told the truth about socialism. but the quote attributed to him after he exposed the full extent of soviet murder and terror when he was supposed to have said 'i told you so, you fecking fools' wasnt him. it was kingsley amis. i know this because i met, purely by chance(one of those cycling hols) a chap who used to live with conquest. he revered him.

orwells barmy politics always puzzle me but unlike almost all on the left he wasnt intellectually dishonest or a liar. which is why hes not a hero of theirs.

waughs prose is immaculate. although im not a believer his biography of edmund campion is matchless. easy job being his editor.

Take this forum. Now the crowing, the snidey put-downs, the I'm-f*cking-jack_the-lad_and_I_know_more-that-you-losers mentality is all snobbery underneath.

lucan was a mug punter

and hes hovis. even the conspiracy loons have given up on that one

Yes, Amis's letters are marvellous but I find his novels unreadable. Waugh is a wonder but I prefer his contemporary Powell as I get older - Waugh glitters and somewhat artificially but there is the feeling of life in Powell's books. Waugh's Sword of Honour is an amazing achievement. I also revere writers such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Conrad considered suicide as a young man after getting in **** on the roulette wheel. Most gambling seems to be connected to a higher power or supernatural intelligence. Take roulette: 'my numbers' are 0, 14, 23, 35, 36. The times I've ever staked that and then said: watch the adjacent numbers come up instead. And they do. One night: 39 spins of rising stakes on 0. When I bankrupted it CAME UP THE NEXT SPIN! THE NEXT SPIN! If that doesn't make you believe in God, nothing will.

disagree. i think it a dismal combination of stupidity and inadequacy. they dont have the wit to be snidey. in years gone by maybe but not now.

the number of them that are conspiracy loons is a giveaway. its wretched place. i occasionally respond if i spot something that really gives me the ump but its futile really. just makes me feel better for a bit

Lucan believed he could make a good living by playing chemmy while pissed on scotch in Aspinall's club. Mug punter is almost an understatement.

i will believe in god when i see any evidence for him/her/it. until i get to my deathbed and will of course change me mind. no time to be making enemies

great geezer conrad although henry j is hard. talk about calling a spade an earth-inverting horticultural implement

and you are not thinking about true probabillity with numbers. if you have 5 random numbers covered you also have 10 adjacent numbers so the probabailtiy of landing on one of them is actually quite high

and the probability of me spelling that word correctly is 1 in 3. lagging again. and i only got up at 4.30 this afternoon.

And when you have 86 per cent on the board covered it will still find your most hated and unbacked number. There is a supernatural sod's law in all gambling despite what Voltaire said as he died. Wodehouse spoke of 'cruel wheels'.

Henry James got worse as he went on. Roderick Hudson is very good.

OK maths whizz, what's your strategy at roulette? I'll try it.

similar to laying the wrong horse in-running. it will win, whatever the choc ice. i do it 10 times a day

i usually get away with unattributed quotations aboard this ship of fools. become a bit lazy

wilkie collins one id never considered until recently. weird. but looking at me shelves there is a great weight of putin books and russia in general. david satter being the new orwell

simple. consume a boatload of sherbet, grab a richard, no matter how ugly and get her to chuck it wherever she pleases. its a small fraction against but the margins are tight so the soppy cow might get lucky and so might you

despite peoples perception its better than almost all other forms of gaming. the margin is a lot less than racing but wagon-shunters like to have agency, even if they are clueless.

but casinos aint for gambling, as any fule no.

To go back to the OP - if gambling is 'boring' then why do it at all?

To win money of course, but often that's also not a reality for many that still continue to gamble.

Seems to me that it must be evidence that gambling isn't boring really, or at least not in comparison to other activity.

gambling may or may not be boring. i dont think it is. but you can become bored by it.

for most its a fantasy of winning big without doing much. and thats a tantalising prospect when you dont have much. it certainly was for me when i was labouring on building sites

but aside from a spectacular accident of fate almost everyone will lose.

but nobody who gambles in a casino thinks this way. it really is fun for them and they know it. so its not boring and mildly exciting

what i find odd is the female love of numbers. bingo is amazingly popular. and 90% women. they luvanumber. but its rubbish. beats me. no fun in that. at least with racing you can go through the machinations and arrive at a selection and then when it wins your work is validated. i suspect this could be part of the appeal

Bingo is popular because - like the lottery - it gives the impression to losing punters that they were very close to winning, encouraging them to try again.

At the point were the lottery machine has drawn 5 of your 6 numbers with one ball to come - you are still barely a 2% chance of winning the jackpot.

When a bingo player is hovering over their card with every number crossed off bar one, there will be dozens of numbers still to call and equally a tiny chance of winning with the next number.

But both will feel that they *almost* won and play again.

gambling on the horses is the greatest game in the world especially at big prices ,ok you will have plenty of losers at the odds but a 20/1 plus winner is like a double hit of smack and cocaine ,you could have done a fair bit of dough and feeling down but hit a big priced winner and bosh you are reaching for the stars the confidence kicks back in and the losers are wiped out in one hit . cant whack it !